A focus on small brands
Challenges and opportunities for the majority of brands (because only so many brands can be large)
Tiny today – big tomorrow?
Where is share growth greater — big or small brands? We tracked 5,000 Top 10 brands across many countries and categories over five years, grouped by starting share tier.
Three findings stand out:
(1) Winning brands (those gaining share) are most common below 5% starting share and rarest among high-share brands.
(2) But among winners, big brands gain far more on average (+4.7pp vs +1.5pp), as they need less added penetration per share point. Their losses, when losing, are larger too.
(3) In aggregate, small brands win bigger: winners in the smallest tier added 2,347pp of share versus just 862pp for the fewer big brands.
Triple whammy for small brands
Double jeopardy is well documented: smaller brands have fewer buyers who buy them slightly less often. But they face a third obstacle.
Across ~750 FMCG brands in 9 European markets, small brands earn consistently lower brand-perception ratings than large brands — with a wider gap showing on “subjective” measures (recommendation, perceived quality) than more “objective” ones (ad intensity, new products). Tellingly, even their own users rate them lower than large-brand users do, and non-users are less enthusiastic too. A case of quadruple jeopardy?
Small brands – more reliance on fewer retailers
Big brands attract retailers (shelf turnover, equity) and big retailers attract brands (exposure, reach). But shelf space is limited, private labels compete for it, and listing more brands adds complexity — so not every retailer lists every major brand.
We examined Top 10 brand availability across 60+ categories in the Top 10 retailers of 9 countries. Larger retailers list brands of any rank more often: the average #1 brand appears in nearly 90% of the Top 3 retailers, dropping below 80% in smaller ones. They also carry more lower-ranked brands: the average #6–10 brand is available in about half of Top 3 retailers versus below 40% of smaller ones.
So smaller brands depend more on each retailer that stocks them — a retailer-side double jeopardy: listed by fewer retailers, and more reliant on each.
Watch the 6th video of our Consumer Pulse Crisis Video series
In a normal recession, shoppers trade down and the low-cost formats clean up. But inflation is a different beast, and it’s squeezing the discounters harder than the brands. The sixth episode of Consumer Pulse: The Crisis Series is now live. Professor Katrijn Gielens (Tilburg School of Economics and Management) joins Richard Herbert to explore what inflation does to retailers, discounters and the balance of power with brands.
